1991 Alfa Romeo 164 L Sedan 4-door 3.0l Paninfarina Italian Washington Car on 2040-cars

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Alfa Romeo Giulia, Stelvio Quadrifoglio get louder and — literally — greener

Alfa Romeo made several small improvements to the Quadrifoglio variants of the Giulia and the Stelvio as part of its 110th birthday celebrations. The changes make both models safer, more stylish, and quite a bit louder. Outside, the design tweaks are largely limited to new-look LED rear lights with darker lenses and 21-inch alloy wheels for the Stelvio. The color palette grows with the addition of three new hues called 6C Villa d'Este Red, GT Junior Ocra, and Montreal Green, respectively. They're heritage-laced colors that dyed-in-the-wool Alfisti will immediately recognize; the green is a tribute to the V8-powered Montreal released in 1970, for example. Step aboard, and you'll notice there's a redesigned center console that stylists carved additional storage space into, a new steering wheel, plus additional upholstery choices. Sparco sport seats built around a carbon fiber shell are waiting on the list of options along with red and green seatbelts. The updated infotainment system we've already experienced in the standard Giulia has found its way to the Quadrifoglio, too. It's displayed on an 8.8-inch touchscreen and Alfa Romeo added a feature called Performance Pages that shows a wealth of drivetrain-related parameters like the turbo pressure, the amount of power generated in real-time, and a chronometer. If these digital features sound familiar, it's likely because some Dodge models — including the Challenger — are already available with the Performance Pages app. We like it there, and we'll certainly enjoy Alfa's spin on it. Bosch helped Alfa Romeo add a panoply of electronic driving aids to the Giulia and Stelvio. The list includes lane-keeping assist, adaptive cruise control, active blind spot assist, traffic sign recognition, and traffic jam assist. The suite corresponds to level two on the SAE scale so it doesn't turn either model into an autonomous car. There are no mechanical changes to report, meaning power still comes from a 2.9-liter V6 that relies on a pair of beefy turbochargers to make 505 horsepower and 443 pound-feet of torque. It spins the rear wheels via an eight-speed automatic transmission, and pelts the Giulia from zero to 60 mph in 3.8 seconds before sending it to a 191-mph top speed. The same six powers the bigger, heavier Stelvio, but it channels its power to the four wheels. Enthusiasts who want to be heard before they're seen are in luck.

Alfa Romeo to launch eight new products by 2018, increase sales to 400K units

Alfa Romeo will go back to being the brand people admire, according to CEO Harald Wester.
After a few streams of news on the various brands in the Fiat Chrysler family, here's the deluge we've been waiting for - Alfa Romeo. The legendary Italian brand is being pointed towards a renaissance, as shown by the brand's five-year plan.

Scrapyard Gem: 1999 Alfa Romeo 166, Screwball Rally Edition

SHERBURN-IN-ELMET, England — Alfa Romeo took a break from selling new cars in the United States after 1995, when the final Spider Veloces and 164s were sold here. That beat Fiat and Lancia (both of which departed after 1982), but still deprived us of the Alfa 164's handsome successor: the 166. The easiest way to find discarded 166s is to cross the Atlantic, so that's what I did recently. I've been spending a lot of time in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg in recent years, being the descendant of immigrants from that tiny but proud nation, and there are still quite a few 166s prowling the streets of Luxembourg City. Despite their reputation for unreliability and horrifically rapid depreciation, the 166 looks so good that I remain tempted to ship one home. The facelifted model in the photo above had its debut as a 2003 model and thus won't be legal in the United States until 2028, but the first-year '99s shouldn't raise any U.S. Customs eyebrows when you pick one up at your local port. I was hoping to shoot plenty of interesting Italian iron during my trip to the scrapyards of Yorkshire in January, so I headed over to Sherburn Motor Spares, located on the very land in Sherburn-in-Elmet where the famous Fairey Swordfish torpedo bombers of Bismarck-crippling fame were built. This yard specialises in Italian and French cars; it's what we'd call a dismantler in the United States, so customers aren't allowed to pull their own parts unless they get permission beforehand. There's a nice little breakfast joint located just out front, which was welcome on a below-freezing Yorkshire morning, and the employees are very friendly (though a bit difficult to understand if you come from anywhere else in the English-speaking world). Inside, you'll find plenty of Alfa Romeos, Fiats, Peugeots, Citroens, Renaults and even a few Toyota MR2s; I spotted an extremely rare Alfa Romeo Brera S, which was one of a mere 500 built. Cars rust quickly and inspections are rigorous in England, so I didn't see many machines built prior to our current century. Well back in one of the rows, however, was this first-year 166 done up in some kind of racing livery. The cars were packed and stacked so closely that I wasn't able to get great photos of this car, but Sherburn Motor Spares has included some pre-stacking photos in their eBay store.